Unlike C, B has been quite heavily corrected by later hands.
C has more than one hundred readings peculiar to itself. Two of them I have accepted as correct: summo (for summum; H has mundum) at iii 32, and horas (that is, oras) at vii 1; the reading is also given by I. It is possible that C's correptior should be read at xii 13 for correptius. At xiv 38 C's sceptius is the manuscript reading closest to the correct Scepsius restored by Scaliger.
Most of C's errors are trivial, but at some points it departs widely from the usual text. It omits ix 47 and xiv 37, and interchanges the second hemistichs of iii 26 and 28; xvi 30 is inserted by a later hand, perhaps in an erasure. At viii 43 it has in uita for officio, at xiii 12 contra uiam for nouimus, at xiv 36 in for loci, and at xv 31 colloquio for uerum quid.
C also contains a greater number of purely palaeographical errors than any other manuscript: hunc for nunc (i 25), humeris for numeris (ii 30), hec for nec (ix 30), lucos for sucos (x 19), hasto for horto (xv 7), ueiiuolique for ueliuolique (xvi 21), pretia for pr(o)elia (xvi 23).
B and C sporadically offer the third declension accusative plural ending -is (ix 4 fascis C, ix 7 partis C, ix 73 rudentis B, x 17 cantantis B, xii 30 albentis B). But more usually all manuscripts, including B and C, have the accusative in -es: compare for example ii 27 partes, iii 53 purgantes, ix 35 praesentes, and ix 42 fasces. The manuscripts show a similar variation in the earlier books of the Ex Ponto. The ninth-century Hamburg manuscript (A) sometimes offers accusatives in -is where the other manuscripts, even B and C, have -es (I iv 23 partis, I v 11 talis, I vi 39 ligantis, I vi 51 turris). At I ii 4, A has omnes, where C1 has omnis, and in general even in A the accusative in -es is the predominant form. For example, A offers auris at II iv 13 and II ix 25, but aures at I ii 127, I ix 5, II v 33, and II ix 3. In view of the instability of the manuscript evidence[10], I have normalized the ending to -es in all cases, considering the instances of -is to be scribal interpolations.
Similarly, I have used the form penna at iv 12 and vii 37, where C offers pinna. Penna is the form given in the ancient manuscripts of Virgil, and attested by Quintilian.
MFHILT
The other manuscripts I have collated belong to the vulgate class. They are not related to each other in the sense that B and C are related, nor does any of them possess independent authority as does G. Within the group firm lines of affiliation are hard to establish, and each of the manuscripts attests a handful of good readings that are found in few or none of the others, either by happy conjecture, or because a reading that was in circulation at the time as a variant chanced to get copied into a few surviving manuscripts. Professor R. J. Tarrant has noted that the presence of the Ex Ponto in north-central France 'can be traced from the eleventh century onwards, first from echoes in Hildebert of Lavardin and Baudri de Bourgeuil, later from the extracts in the Florilegium Gallicum, and finally from the complete texts [which include our H and F] ... that emanate from this region toward the end of the twelfth century' (Texts and Transmission 263); the vulgate manuscripts seem to have been propagated from the text current in the region of Orléans.
M and F show some originality. Their readings at xvi 33 differ somewhat from the version of that passage in HILT. F1's interpolation for the missing pentameter at iii 44 differs from that of MHILT, while M has an interpolated distich following x 6 that is not otherwise attested.
Of the other manuscripts, I agrees with C in reading horas (=oras) for undas at vii 1, while T is the only manuscript collated to have the correct laeuus at ix 119 in the original hand (F2 gives it as a variant reading). Similarly, H and L each have a few peculiar variants.